Communist Party Leaders Arrested; Test of Smith Act Ahead

The top leaders of the Communist Party were arrested under the Smith Act on this day. The Smith Act, enacted on June 29, 1940, made it a crime to advocate the violent overthrow of the government. After a stormy trial, in which the prosecutor relied primarily on Marxist writings and offered no evidence of any planned effort to overthrow the U.S. government, 11 party leaders were convicted. The appeal of their convictions resulted in the Supreme Court decision, Dennis v. UnitedStates on June 4, 1951, in which the Court upheld the convictions as well as the constitutionality of the Smith Act. Civil libertarians regarded the Dennis decision as a serious blow to First Amendment rights.

Read: Michael R. Belknap, Cold War Political Justice: The Smith Act, the Communist Party, and American Civil Liberties (1977)